Tech. Rock. Pop. Truthiness.

So yeah, I’m still around. I’ve been avoiding the whole blogging thing for a bit…not totally sure why. Anyway, here’s some of what I’ve been up to:

Shows of the music varity: Namely, Yo la Tengo and Beirut. YLT was of course excellent, but they did not play a single “hit” song. No “From a Motel 6″. No “Tom Courtney”. No “Pablo and Andrea”. It was all stuff from the admittedly ass-beating new album and some spacey instrumentals from the “And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out” period. Beirut was brilliant–just as expected. They played some new stuff, which sounded like the “old” stuff. I can’t help but wonder where Beirut can go from here. Hawk and a Hacksaw really impressed me at the time, and now their website is impressing me some more. Check them out — it’s old timey, interesting stuff. A great fit for Beirut.

Shows of the TV varity: I finally finished seasons 1-5 of The Sopranos. It’s still stuck in my mind. That show is such a remarkable achievement in cinema/television/storytelling–I gasp at times in awe of all the talent involved. All other TV (and some film) pales in comparison. I know that sounds a bit heavy, I believe it’s impossible not to feel that way about it after careful review. I’m also finishing up Lost season 2 this weekend and catching up on season 3. The dialogue is really bad fairly often (some of it seems to be recycled week after week and between characters), but that is forgivable when you realize all the creativity that has gone into the mythology behind this sci-fi drama. Take a trip through the Lostapedia and you’ll see what I mean.

My online CSS class: It’s finally done — six full weeks of instructors who don’t instruct and recommend four-year old materials. I would never recommend using eClasses. Their webapp for the classroom is one of the most unusable websites I have ever seen. But I certainly am more versed in CSS than I had been, so watch for some design updates on this site. Next step is my little JavaScript book. I learned the basics in college–we’ll see what happens.

Keeping busy: It seems like my weekends are either filled to the brim or totally empty. This is one of those empty weekends, but last weekend was one of my faves in a long time. My oldest best friend, Nathan (aka George Moskal) had an open house as part of the Lowertown Art Crawl. His fashion is amazing and will be shown at Voltage at First Ave in April. Pretty fuckin’ awesome. He also promises to try out for Project Runway. He can totally kick No-neck’s ass (see Figure 1).